Fairbank used his credentials to delete a mild appendicitis diagnosis and enter a severe cardiac event in its place, eighteen minutes ago — right after settling his fee.

Nothing in this system erases.

It’s all still here.” The blood left Fairbank’s face entirely, and his professional calm went with it; he stumbled back into a monitor stand and could not find a single word.

Chapter 13 — The Collapse

My father stared at the papers on the table, and at the phone still playing in my hand, and then, slowly, at his son.

I watched it arrive in him — the wire transfer, the “hospital deposit,” the account that wasn’t the hospital’s.